LIVING: Renting Formalwear

These days you can rent just about everything for a wedding  champagne glasses, tables and chairs and the wedding gown.

That's right. Some brides are by-passing sentiment for the chance to save hundreds of dollars on gowns.

Tasha Birkeland of Bellevue learned from her sister's experience. Her sister bought a dress. Now it just sits in the attic. She said if she had it to do over again, she would've rented.

When Birkeland gets married July 16, she will wear a gown rented from Millie's Tux and Bridal in Kitsap County, and she figures she will have saved herself about $350. Her bridesmaids also will have the option of renting or buying.

With outlets in Port Orchard, Bremerton and Silverdale and an inventory of roughly 8,000 bridal gowns, formals and tuxedos, Millie's is one of the largest bridal stores in Washington.

At Millie's, tuxedos rent from $30 to $50 and prom gowns from $50 to $75. Bridal gowns rent from $100 to $250, unless a gown is special ordered, in which case it rents for half the purchase price.

Compare that to an average expenditure of $450 to $600 to buy a gown and the appeal of renting bridalwear becomes crystal clear.

Rental bridalwear isn't readily available everywhere. More than half of Millie's bridal clients come from Seattle, Olympia and Tacoma.

Millie and Darrell Cullimore did not intend to get into the formalwear business. They settled down to retirement in 1984, with a small costume shop in Port Orchard to keep Millie busy. But a funny thing happened on the way to the prom.

In 1987, some boys on a budget stopped by the costume shop hoping to find tuxedos to rent at a price they could afford. They found a few, mostly older styles, some looking like something Humphrey Bogart would wear. But at $25, the price was right. Word got around, and before long, even the bell bottoms were rented.

The Cullimores sensed a need for affordable formalwear rental, with the emphasis on affordable.

"We do everything we can to keep the cost down," Millie Cullimore said. This includes doing almost all their own laundry, pressing and mending.

"We do everything by hand," Cullimore said. "People are always amazed at how clean we get (the outfits). They can't tell a new one from a used one."

The idea to rent formalwear for women also began with the costume shop. The Cullimores bought out a bridal store in Tacoma that was going out of business. They thought they would use the gowns as costumes.

The surprise was that the gowns were popular with women looking for something to wear at weddings and proms.

They added to their inventory. And now they buy directly from the major manufacturers.

The Cullimores say they pioneered the idea of renting formalwear to women in the Puget Sound region.

It wasn't easy selling manufacturers on the idea of renting out their gowns, but eventually they succeeded, paving the way for others to do the same.

Millie's also sells new and used gowns. They can furnish virtually everything in wedding and formal attire, including veils, shoes and accessories. They also do minor alterations at no charge.

While the costume shop has taken a backseat to the formalwear, they do maintain an inventory of more than 2,000 costumes, not counting props and accessories. They supply almost all the regional theaters, including several in Tacoma, and, of course, they do a big business at Halloween.

"Millie is quite ingenious in making the special costumes we need," said Darrell Cullimore.

She once had to dress seven Navy chiefs in tutus and Keystone cop jackets for an initiation ceremony.

"They all looked like saloon girls when I got through with them,"she said.

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